Category: Work Relationships

Trust is a very special commodity.

Yet we live in a world full of low-trust & suspicion. The emerging streams of newsfeed fill our waking lives with examples of discrepancies, dishonesty, ulterior motives, not- so-hidden agendas, personal gains, neglectful practice & backhanders which feeds us with low-trust. So who can we trust? And how? I was always told that there’s no such thing as automatic trust, you have to earn it!

Getting savvy to our own psychological trusting makeup helps us to see through the mist & smokescreens of good relating with others. Personal relationships, romantic relationships, work relationships all demand a level of receptivity & scrutiny from our trust monitor. Our radar of previous hurts, childhood wounds, experiences of having our trust broken is on the look- out for indicators & first whiff of something fishy, our self-preservation armour clunks into place. We are full of so many downloaded mis-trust messages in our psychological inner world – “don’t talk to strangers”, “be careful, the world is not a safe place”, “ people are only nice to you because they want something”

Have you lost your joie de vive? Do you find yourself getting drained listening to others’ crisis &
personal issues? Yes I know sometimes life is tough & we have our own issues to deal with too! As a line manager do you find your internal empathy is running a bit dry? Are you sufficiently emotionally robust to handle co-workers’ grief, traumas, life-dramas, over-sensitivities, anger outbursts etc? Maybe you are suffering from compassion fatigue otherwise known as ‘vicarious traumatisation‘.